Economy |

San Jose, Oakland airports post-COVID flights soar during October

A correction to an earlier version of this article has been appended to the end of the article.

San Jose and Oakland airports posted passenger activity numbers in October that topped the one million mark — yet the flight activity at both aviation hubs remains far weaker than before the coronavirus outbreak.

For several consecutive months, the South Bay and the East Bay aviation hubs have managed to handle at least one million passengers.

Oakland International Airport has been above the million mark for five months in a row, while San Jose International Airport is on a six-month streak for that activity benchmark, according to separate reports from the two airports.

San Jose airport handled slightly more than 1.08 million passengers in October, which was 31.8% higher than the roughly 821,200 passengers that flew through the South Bay travel hub in October 2021, new airport statistics show.

Oakland’s airport handled just over 1.04 million passengers in October, up 26.2% from the approximately 825,800 passengers that transited through the East Bay aviation complex in October 2021, the airport reports.

Yet even with these respective upswings in passenger activity, both San Jose and Oakland airports have a long way to travel before they can climb back to the heady heights they enjoyed prior to March 2020, the onset of coronavirus-linked business shutdowns and travel restrictions.

“Our internal projections question whether or not we’ll be able to maintain the over one million streak in January and February,” said Scott Wintner, a spokesperson for San Jose International Airport. “Our airline partners continue to struggle with crew and aircraft availability, so several of them have continued to limit capacity into the new year.”

Over the most recent one-year period ending in October, San Jose airport averaged 920,200 passengers a month.

In contrast, San Jose airport averaged 1.3 million passengers a month during 2019, the last calendar year before the start of the coronavirus shutdowns in 2020 led to a collapse of air travel both in the Bay Area and worldwide.

This means that the per-month activity at San Jose airport during the most recent one-year period was 29.2% below the per-month average in 2019, a year when the South Bay airport handled an all-time record of 15.65 million passengers.

Oakland airport averaged 911,800 passengers a month during the one-year period that ended in October. In 2019, the East Bay aviation hub averaged 1.12 million passengers a month in 2019.

Oakland airport’s per-month passenger trips during the most recent one-year period was 20.8% below the per-month average in 2019. That year, Oakland airport handled 13.38 million passengers, the second-best year on record other than 2018, when 13.59 million passengers transited through the East Bay travel hub.

Still, while some weakness remains evident in the passenger flight activity at both Oakland and San Jose airports, the current trends are encouraging.

Over the one-year period that ended in October, San Jose airport handled 11.04 million passengers. That is 134% higher — more than double — the facility’s 4.71 million passengers in 2020. It’s also 50% above the 7.36 million passengers handled by San Jose airport in 2021.

“The number of travelers we are seeing now is back in the range of what we saw just six years ago,” San Jose airport spokesperson Wintner said.

Oakland International Airport handled 10.94 million passengers during a similar one-year period ending in October. That was 137% higher than Oakland airport’s 4.62 million passengers in 2020 and 34.4% above the 8.14 million passengers that transited through the East Bay aviation complex in 2021.

“We expect to finish out the year strong,” said Bryant Francis, director of aviation with the Port of Oakland.